Based on today’s presentations, what challenges come to mind in creating and assessing your Gen Ed-focused assignment/activity? (Feel free to add inspirations as well!)
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Firstly, the presentations and discussions were very helpful today. I feel like I have more tools to use and greater clarity about the new assignment.
Glossary: I will suggest to the course coordinators and other instructors that we expand the concept development assignment to include requiring the students to include a formal definition of the words they chose for their projects, and to include a diagram or image from the internet or other external source. This is an attempt to get them acquainted with generally accepted meanings and definitions.
Lecture Readings: At this time, I plan to incorporate the Reading with Annotation into this one assignment, which will take place over at least three class meetings. The first class meeting will be to break into small groups and read in class. The readings and groups will be distributed prior to class, but realistically I know very few students will read before class. The deliverable for the first class is to select a concept from the reading to define in the second. The second class meeting will be for the groups to meet and fill in a template based on the Frayer Method, with text and images (or video) for the selected concept. The templates will be on a shared platform, such as Miro. Groups will present their work in the third (and possibly fourth) class meeting(s).
Two functional challenges will be to work within the structure of the classes and to make sure that the assignment aligns with the overall goals of the course. I will also need to get buy-in from the other instructors teaching other sections, so that there is consistency across the entire student group.
The structural challenge for this assignment is that the reading assignment will take place in the Lecture portion of the class, which is currently not graded. I have been advocating for that to change because I believe that students will not commit to attendance – let alone participate – unless the class and activities are perceived as required.
I will be meeting with the course coordinators and other instructors on Monday 1/20/25 and will discuss all of these ideas and concerns.
The challenge that keeps resurfacing for me is determining how (if) high-stakes the goals of my Gen Ed-focused assignments need to be. I often find myself grappling with questions like: Should the subject matter tie directly into a high-stakes component of the students’ overall learning? Or is it okay for these assignments to sit in the low-to-mid stakes range, contributing to their growth in subtler ways?
Currently, due to the structure of the class, I can’t make significant changes to the syllabus. However, I do have flexibility in adjusting how some objectives are accomplished within that framework. While this allows me to integrate general education practices into smaller, scaffolded components—such as those leading up to the term project, which accounts for 25% of the grade—I often question whether these adjustments carry enough weight to truly qualify as “general education.”
For example, the term project itself is relatively fixed, but I can introduce Gen Ed principles in the way students approach and complete its smaller components. This feels manageable, but I’m constantly balancing what’s inspiring versus what’s practical. Hospitality education, by nature, is highly technical. Students must leave with a strong set of practical skills, and with limited class time—just under 30 hours for the semester after accounting for midterms and finals—our time to incorporate broader, exploratory learning is minimal.
That said, I’m deeply inspired by the creative approaches shared by other faculty. These conversations spark ideas and aspirations, but they also highlight the tension between innovation and the time constraints of our curriculum. It’s a constant balancing act: finding ways to integrate meaningful practices while ensuring students achieve the essential technical competencies they’ll need in their careers.
What I’ve come to recognize is that even within these constraints, I’m often already embedding Gen Ed practices into my teaching—even when they’re not explicitly labeled as such. Acknowledging that is both reassuring and motivating. It’s a reminder that while the challenge of reimagining assignments within a rigid framework is real, the work I’m already doing has value and aligns with larger educational goals.
Ultimately, the challenge is not a barrier but an opportunity to innovate within boundaries, finding creative ways to enhance my students’ learning experience while staying true to the practical nature of hospitality education.
Today was a challenge as rubrics, assessments, and quantitative literacy are all new concepts to me. I didn’t realize until the second semester of teaching that the final project grading was on two different rubrics (sorry 1st class I taught!).
I’m teaching a course I’ve never taught before and still digesting the syllabus and how to reach the PLOs I was given. I struggle with creating activities to support the student’s learning, and I am inspired by the other assignment idea.
I don’t know yet what changes I’ll be making, but I hope I will figure it out very soon!
My challenge will be on how to use the grading rubric to assess students fairly. For Math, we assign points based on students’ written work by showing each step of solving problems. Now, my focus will be on oral communication. I need to think about what kind of assignment/activity to give to the class and using a rubric to give students points based on it.
Each day of presentations give me more ideas to think about and I really enjoyed taking in all these new information and learn how to apply some of them. In general, I have a hard time of making decisions when I have too many to choose from. I will need to go back to review and prioritize what I want my students to gain from the class while picking a focus from general education practices.
Alejandro,
You are correct, you do have to re-invent the wheel. You may recall that I said on day one that Gen Ed is already in our courses, we just need to identify the specifics. The activity/assignment you create may be small stakes in grading points, but the outcome profound. Patricia’s Brooklyn Bridge activity was not a high stakes assignment, but the result was amazing. The points may be low, but the impact high. Maybe that is how we should measure all our assignments. The “Aha” moment can be inside or outside the classroom. I do take your point about the discipline-specific learning objectives of the course, so scaffolding an assignment may also work for you. Being aware of and caring about the “Balancing Act” is the stuff that impactful teachers are made of, like the ones that Rebecca spoke about and that we each have in our memories and aspire to be.
Some challenges in creating the gen ed assignment will be
Figuring out a creative way to explain the assignment that doesn’t overwhelm the students with the volume of reading. Or teaching them a method of reading the assignments that will help them to understand what to do.
Also, taking the time to figure out the right assessments I need to use and the best way to structure it. I do rubrics well, but I think I can do better, now that I know a lot more of the pedagogical techniques and am more familiar with the way students often struggle in my class.
Hi everyone, I still don’t see my reflection on our third class meeting so I will re-type it here (resisting the temptation to edit the grammar, etc.!) and hopefully it will go through:
“Firstly, the presentations and discussions were very helpful today. I feel like I have more tools to use and greater clarity about the new assignment.
Glossary: I will suggest to the course coordinators and the other instructors that we expand the concept development assignment to include requiring the students to include a formal definition of the words they chose for their projects, and to include a diagram or image from the internet or other external source. This is an attempt to get them acquainted with generally accepted meanings and definitions.
Lecture Readings: At this time, I plan to incorporate the Reading with Annotation into this one assignment, which will take place over at least three class meetings. The first class meeting will be to break into small groups and read in class. The readings and groups will be distributed prior to class, but realistically I know that very few students will read before class. The deliverable for the first class is to select a concept from the reading to define in the second. The second class meeting will be for the groups to meet and fill in a template based on the Frayer Method [sic], with text and images (or video) for the selected concept. The templates will be on a shared platform, such as Miro. Groups will present their work in the third (and possibly fourth) class meeting(s).
Two functional challenges will be to work within the structure of the classes and to make sure that the assignment aligns with the overall goals of the course. I will also need to get buy-in from the other instructors teaching other sections, that there is consistency across the entire student group.
The structural challenge for this assignment is that the reading assignment will take place in the Lecture portion of the class, which is currently not graded. I have been advocating for that to change because I believe that students will not commit to attendance – let alone participate – unless the class activities are perceived as required.
I will be meeting with the course coordinators and other instructors on Monday 1/20/25 and will discuss these ideas and concerns.”
Update 1/29/25: I will be introducing the new assignment on 2/5/25 and will work with the instructor for the second Lecture section so that they are comfortable with the materials. Due to the schedule for other activities in the Lecture classes, the student groups will have to fill out the Frayer Model templates on their own time. Presentations by the groups will take place on 3/5 and 3/6 and we will have follow up discussions of the assignment on 4/23. The schedule is probably too drawn out, but with some reminders in the Studio section and through Brightspace Announcements, I hope that the students actually have time to read and reflect and possibly even re-visit the ideas we discuss as they go through the design process. Fingers crossed!
Based on today’s presentations, what challenges come to mind in creating and assessing your Gen Ed-focused assignment/activity?
The challenges that come to mind are: if my activity will reflect on the gen ed requirements/rubric and if it will help students. This is my first time using the rubric so I am not sure if I will use all the factors that are in the rubric.
Reflection on Challenges and Inspirations for Creating a Gen Ed-Focused Assignment in Anatomy & Physiology
Creating and assessing a Gen Ed-focused assignment in Anatomy & Physiology presents both exciting opportunities and meaningful challenges. One of the key challenges is bridging the gap between the technical content of the course and the broader goals of general education, such as critical thinking, communication, and interdisciplinary connection. Students often enter Anatomy & Physiology, expecting the course to be solely content-heavy and memorization-based, and encouraging them to view the material through a Gen Ed lens, where writing, reflection, and application matter, may initially feel unfamiliar or uncomfortable.
Another challenge involves assessing skills like writing or oral communication in a way that aligns with the course’s scientific rigor. Balancing discipline-specific accuracy with more general academic skills requires thoughtfully designed rubrics and communicated expectations.
I left the day’s presentations feeling inspired by the many strategies shared for integrating general education principles into disciplinary teaching. In my course, I use writing to help students activate and connect their background knowledge to new content. This could include short reflective prompts like, “What do you already know about the cardiovascular system, and how might it relate to your health?” These brief activities help students bring prior learning into focus before diving into new material.
To maintain engagement when students read for class, I rely heavily on oral communication, including guided discussions, small-group dialogues, and quick alouds that encourage active processing. After reading, I use peer and instructor-provided feedback as a key strategy to help students consolidate their understanding and correct misconceptions.
Additionally, case studies are an important part of my instruction. They contextualize anatomical knowledge in real-world scenarios and support disciplinary literacy by teaching students how to “read” the body through symptoms, diagnostic findings, and clinical reasoning.
Overall, Gen Ed integration is not a separate layer but an essential part of helping students become well-rounded thinkers and future healthcare professionals. The challenge is finding the right balance; the day’s presentations gave me practical tools and renewed motivation to keep working on that.
One of the challenges that came up repeatedly across the presentations is one that resonates deeply with my own experience, which is how uneven our students’ preparation can be for tasks that assume certain baseline literacies, whether linguistic, technological, or procedural. It goes beyond simple concerns about reading difficulty or digital fluency (although those are included!), but more in the nature of the kind of invisible skills that do not typically make it into a curriculum: time management, self-direction, and the ability to scaffold one’s own work.
In my experience, students sometimes struggle not only with creativity or willingness, but with the necessary precondition of successfully plotting out the stages of an open-ended task. I think this is an important skill to have, that education should prepare our students to chart a route through ambiguity. Instead of simply imposing external deadlines, learning prepare students by helping them learn to learn.
From the discussions of the READ initiative, I also felt renewed urgency around incorporating active reading strategies and visual scaffolding into assignments. Many of my students aren’t just new to college — they’re new to the idea of “doing something” with what they read beyond reading and writing for the test or examination or assignment. Techniques like KWL charts or Anticipation Guides can help anchor more abstract or multidisciplinary assignments. There was also an important conversation about AI, equity, and who controls the flow of information — “the medium is the message/the massage”, as McLuhan puts it, and to paraphrase, “first, we shape our tools, and afterwards, our tools shape us”; there’s an ethical obligation to make our students more aware of the systems they’re navigating, the effects they have not only in terms of content-and-form, but in terms of the changes that produce in scope, scale, tempo, and pattern.